Hyrcania (Ancient Greek: Ὑρκανία; Arabic: Khirbet el-Mird) was an ancient fortress in the Judean Desert. The site was rebuilt during the Byzantine period as a monastery called Kastellion.

Water reservoir

Herodian-period mosaic floor

The site is located on an isolated hill about 200 m above the Hyrcania valley, on its western edge. It is about 5 km west of Qumran, and 16 km east of Jerusalem. The site has not yet been thoroughly excavated. Current knowledge about the ruins of the site is based on a limited number of test pits.

The fortress is mentioned again in 57 BC when Alexander of Judaea, son of Aristobulus II, fled from the Roman governor of Syria, Aulus Gabinius, who had come to suppress the revolt Alexander had stirred up against Hyrcanus II. Alexander made to re-fortify Hyrcania, but eventually surrendered to Gabinius, the fortress was then razed.[2] The Greek geographer Strabo also notes the destruction, along with that of Alexandrion and Machaerus, the "haunts of the robbers and the treasure-holds of the tyrants", at the direction of Gabinius's superior, the Roman general Pompey.[3]

Hyrcania is next reported in 33–32 BC being used in an uprising against Herod the Great led by the sister of Herod's executed former rival Antigonus.[4] The fortress was retaken, and extended;[5] it became notorious as a place where Herod imprisoned and killed his enemies,[6] ultimately including his own son and heir Antipater.[7]

In later times St Sabbas the Sanctified founded a residence (cenobium) for hermits on the site in 492 AD, called the Kastellion, part of the satellite community or lavra associated with the monastery at Mar Saba 4 km to the south-west. Hermits remained until the 14th century, with a brief attempt made to re-establish the community between 1923 and 1939,[8] this identification is based on Vita Sabae, the vita or biography of St Sabbas, and is generally accepted by researchers.[9] The Aramaic descriptive term marda, "fortress", corresponds in meaning to the Greek name Kastellion, but should not be seen as a proper name for the site, Marda as a location name being reserved, as we can see from the vita of St Euthymius, for Masada, the Herodian palace-fortress near the Dead Sea which was briefly resettled by Byzantine monks.[9]

Some have identified the Hyrcania valley below the fortress with the Biblical valley of Achor, which is identified in the Copper Scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls as the site of a great treasure, this has led to interest by treasure hunters in the area, despite it being subject to live-fire exercises by the Israeli army.[10] Two ancient stepped tunnels cut down into the rock for a distance of 50 metres nearby were cleared of debris and sand in an investigation led by Oren Gutfeld of Hebrew University, but yielded only a Hasmonean-period clay pot and a skeleton.[10][11]

^Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book XIII, §416 (tr. William Whiston, 1895). "So Alexandra, not knowing what to do with any decency, committed the fortresses to them, all but Hyrcania, and Alexandrion, and Macherus, where her principal treasures were."

1.
Hyrcania
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Hyrcania is a historical region composed of the land south-east of the Caspian Sea in modern day Iran, bound in the south by the Alborz mountain range and the Kopet Dag in the east. The region served as a satrapy of the Median Empire, a sub-province of the Achaemenid Empire, and a province within its successors, Hyrcania bordered Parthia to the east, Dihistan to the north, Media to the south and Mardia to the west. After the fall of the Sasanian Empire in 651 AD, Hyrcania was known as Tabaristan, according to Ctesias, Astyages grandson Megabernes also served as satrap of Hyrcania. Under the Achaemenid Empire, Hyrcania served as a sub-province of the satrapy of Parthia, at times, Cadusia may have been administered as part of Hyrcania. Fortifications to protect Hyrcania against nomadic incursions were constructed during the Achaemenid period, following Darius the Greats victory over the Magian usurper, Gaumata, in September 522 BC, revolts spread throughout the empire. In December 522 BC, a revolt in support of the Median leader Phraortes erupted in Hyrcania, and in March 521 BC, in May, Phraortes was defeated and Hyrcania returned to Achaemenid rule. Darius later settled Hyrcanians in the settlement of Dareionkome in the Hyrcanian Plain in Lydia, other Hyrcanian settlements in the Hermus valley include Ormoita and Tyanolla. According to Herodotus, Hyrcanian soldiers participated in the Second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC under the command of Megapanus, after the war, a garrison composed of Hyrcanian soldiers was posted in the valleys of the rivers Hermus and Caicus. Under Xerxes I, Hyrcania was likely detached from the satrapy of Parthia, some sources imply Hyrcania was later administered as a sub-province of Media. According to Ctesias, Artaxerxes I appointed his illegitimate son Ochus as satrap of Hyrcania in c.425 BC, by the time of Alexander the Greats invasion of the Achaemenid Empire in 334 BC, Hyrcania was reattached to the satrapy of Parthia and administered as a sub-province. Hyrcanian soldiers are mentioned in the Battle of Gaugamela against Alexander in 331 BC, after the death of Darius III in 330 BC, many Persian noblemen fled to Hyrcania. Alexander reached Hyrcania in 330 BC, where he accepted the surrender of Phrataphernes, satrap of Hyrcania and Parthia, Alexander seized Zadracarta, the capital of Hyrcania, hereafter known as Syrinx, later that year and received the surrender of other satraps and nobles. Whilst in Hycania, Alexander appointed his general Amminapes as satrap of Hyrcania and Parthia, in 328 BC, Autophradates rebelled against Alexander and Phrataphernes, who had been reinstated as satrap of Parthia, was sent to quell the revolt. Autophradates was defeated and executed by Alexander at Pasargadae in 324 BC and Phrataphernes was granted the satrapies of Hyrcania, Tapuria, and Mardia. Following the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, his empire was divided amongst the Diadochi in the Partition of Babylon, which confirmed Phrataphernes control of Hyrcania and Parthia. The Partition of Triparadisus in 321 BC granted Parthia and Hyrcania to Philip, however, Philip was killed by Peithon, satrap of Media, in 318 BC and Peithon appointed his brother Eudemus as satrap. Seleucus son, Antiochus I, appointed Andragoras as satrap of Parthia and Hyrcania at a date prior to 266 BC. Andragoras may have founded the city of Dehestān during his tenure as satrap, Andragoras was killed in 238 BC during the Parni conquest of Parthia, led by Arsaces, who went on to conquer Hyrcania in 235 BC, thereafter forming part of the Arsacid Empire

2.
Acropolis
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An acropolis is a settlement, especially a citadel, built upon an area of elevated ground—frequently a hill with precipitous sides, chosen for purposes of defense. An example in Ireland is the Rock of Cashel, Acropolis is also the term used by archaeologists and historians for the urban Castro culture settlements located in Northwestern Iberian hilltops. The most famous example is the Acropolis of Athens, which, by reason of its historical associations, although originating in the mainland of Greece, use of the acropolis model quickly spread to Greek colonies such as the Dorian Lato on Crete during the Archaic Period. Because of its classical Hellenistic style, the ruins of Mission San Juan Capistranos Great Stone Church in California, other parts of the world developed other names for the high citadel or alcázar, which often reinforced a naturally strong site. In Central Italy, many small rural communes still cluster at the base of a fortified habitation known as La Rocca of the commune. The term acropolis is also used to describe the complex of overlapping structures, such as plazas and pyramids, in many Maya cities, including Tikal

3.
Bethlehem Governorate
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The Bethlehem Governorate is one of 16 Governorates of Palestine. It covers an area of the West Bank, south of Jerusalem and its principal city and district capital is Bethlehem. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, its population was estimated to 199,463 in 2012, according to United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the governorate has a total area of around 660 km². Because of the occupation by Israel, Palestinians can only use 13% of the area, politically, the Bethlehem Governorate is something of a stronghold of the Palestinian left. At the Palestinian legislative election,2006 the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and its current governor is Salah al-Tamari. The governorate consists of 10 municipalities,3 refugee camps, and 58 rural districts, battir Beit Fajjar Beit Jala Beit Sahour Bethlehem al-Dawha Husan al-Khader Nahalin Tuqu al-Ubeidiya Zaatara Aida Azza Dheisheh

4.
West Bank
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The West Bank shares boundaries to the west, north, and south with Israel, and to the east, across the Jordan River, with Jordan. The West Bank also contains a significant section of the western Dead Sea shore, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has a land area of 5,640 km2 plus a water area of 220 km2, consisting of the northwest quarter of the Dead Sea. As of July 2015 it has an population of 2,785,366 Palestinians, and approximately 371,000 Israeli settlers. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, illegal under international law and this annexation was recognized only by Britain, Iraq and Pakistan. The term was chosen to differentiate the west bank of the River Jordan from the east bank of this river, the neo-Latin name Cisjordan or Cis-Jordan is the usual name for the territory in the Romance languages and Hungarian. The name West Bank, however, has become the standard usage for this entity in English. The analogous Transjordan has historically used to designate the region now roughly comprising the state of Jordan. From 1517 through 1917, the now known as the West Bank was under Ottoman rule as part of the provinces of Syria. At the 1920 San Remo conference, the victorious Allied powers allocated the area to the British Mandate of Palestine, the San Remo Resolution adopted on 25 April 1920 incorporated the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It and Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations were the basic documents upon which the British Mandate for Palestine was constructed. Faced with the determination of Emir Abdullah to unify Arab lands under the Hashemite banner, the West Bank area, was conquered by Jordan during the 1948 war with the new state of Israel. In 1947, it was designated as part of a proposed Arab state by the United Nations partition plan for Palestine. 1949 Armistice Agreements defined the boundary between Israel and Jordan. In 1950, Transjordan annexed the area west of the Jordan River, naming it West Bank or Cisjordan, Jordan ruled over the West Bank from 1948 until 1967. Jordans annexation was never recognized by the international community, with the exception of the United Kingdom. King Abdullah of Jordan had been crowned King of Jerusalem by the Coptic Bishop on 15 November 1948. and granted Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank, in June 1967, the West Bank and East Jerusalem were captured by Israel as a result of the Six-Day War. With the exception of East Jerusalem and the former Israeli-Jordanian no mans land, the Israeli settlements were, on the other hand, administered subsequently as Judea and Samaria Area directly by Israel. Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority officially controls a geographically non-contiguous territory comprising approx, 11% of the West Bank which remains subject to Israeli incursions

5.
Judea
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Judea or Judæa is the ancient Hebrew and Israelite biblical, the exonymic Roman/English, and the modern-day name of the mountainous southern part of Canaan-Israel. As a consequence of the Bar Kokhba revolt, in 135 CE the region was renamed and merged with Roman Syria to form Syria Palaestina by the victorious Roman Emperor Hadrian, a large part of Judea was included in Jordanian West Bank between 1948 and 1967. The name Judea is a Greek and Roman adaptation of the name Judah, nimrud Tablet K.3751, dated c.733 BCE, is the earliest known record of the name Judah. Judea was sometimes used as the name for the entire region, in 200 CE Sextus Julius Africanus, cited by Eusebius, described Nazara as a village in Judea. Judea was the used by English-speakers until the Jordanian occupation of the area in 1948. Jordan called the area ad-difa’a al-gharbiya, yehuda is the Hebrew term used for the area in modern Israel since the region was captured and occupied by Israel in 1967. The classical Roman-Jewish historian Josephus wrote, In the limits of Samaria and Judea lies the village Anuath and this is the northern boundary of Judea. The southern parts of Judea, if they be measured lengthways, are bounded by a village adjoining to the confines of Arabia, however, its breadth is extended from the river Jordan to Joppa. The city Jerusalem is situated in the middle, on which account some have, with sagacity enough. This country begins at Mount Libanus, and the fountains of Jordan, and reaches breadthways to the lake of Tiberias and its inhabitants are a mixture of Jews and Syrians. And thus have I, with all possible brevity, described the country of Judea, Judea is a mountainous region, part of which is considered a desert. It varies greatly in height, rising to an altitude of 1,020 m in the south at Mount Hebron,30 km southwest of Jerusalem, and descending to as much as 400 m below sea level in the east of the region. The climate, accordingly, moves between Mediterranean in the west and desert climate in the east, with a strip of steppe climate in the middle, major urban areas in the region include Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Gush Etzion, Jericho and Hebron. Geographers divide Judea into several regions, the Hebron hills, the Jerusalem saddle, the Bethel hills and the Judean desert east of Jerusalem, the hills are distinct for their anticline structure. In ancient times the hills were forested, and the Bible records agriculture, animals are still grazed today, with shepherds moving them between the low ground to the hilltops as summer approaches, while the slopes are still layered with centuries-old stone terracing. The Jewish Revolt against the Romans ended in the devastation of vast areas of the Judaean countryside, regardless, the Northern Kingdom was conquered into the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 720 BCE. Judea is central to much of the narrative of the Torah, with the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, the Babylonian Empire fell to the conquests of Cyrus the Great in 539 BCE. Judea lost its independence to the Romans in the 1st century BCE, by becoming first a tributary kingdom, then a province, queen Alexandra Salome had recently died, and a civil war broke out between her sons, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II

6.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation

7.
John Hyrcanus
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John Hyrcanus /hərˈkeɪnəs/ was a Hasmonean leader and Jewish High Priest of the 2nd century BCE. In rabbinic literature he is referred to by the epithet. Josephus explains in The Jewish War that John was also known as Hyrcanus, John was not present at a banquet at which his father and his two brothers were murdered, purportedly by his brother-in-law, Ptolemy, son of Abubus. He attained to his fathers offices, that of high priest. Josephus said that John Hyrcanus had five sons but named only four in his histories, Judah Aristobulus I, Antigonus I, Alexander Jannai, during the first year of Hyrcanus’ reign, he faced a serious challenge to independent Judean rule from the Seleucid Empire. Antiochus VII Sidetes marched into Judea, pillaged the countryside and laid a siege on Jerusalem. The prolonged siege caused Hyrcanus to remove any Judean from the city who could not assist with the defense effort and these refugees were not allowed to pass through Antiochus’ lines, becoming trapped in the middle of a chaotic siege. With a humanitarian crisis on his hands, Hyrcanus re-admitted his estranged Jerusalemites when the festival of Sukkot arrived, afterwards, due to food shortages in Jerusalem, Hyrcanus negotiated a truce with Antiochus. These terms were a blow to Hyrcanus, who had to loot the tomb of David to pay the 3000 talents. Following the Seleucid siege, Judea faced tough economic times which were magnified by taxes to the Seleucids enforced by Antiochus, furthermore, Hyrcanus was forced to accompany Antiochus on his eastern campaign in 130 BCE. Hyrcanus probably would have functioned as the commander of a Jewish company in the campaign. This enforced absence probably caused a loss of support for the inexperienced Hyrcanus among the Judean population, Judeans in the countryside were especially disillusioned with Hyrcanus after Antiochus’ army plundered their land. Furthermore, Hyrcanus driving out the population of Jerusalem during the siege also probably caused resentment against him. The action of looting the Tomb of David violated his obligations as High Priest, therefore, at a very early point in his thirty-one year reign of Judea, Hyrcanus had lost the support of Judeans in various cultural sectors. The Jerusalemites, the countryside Judeans and the religious leadership probably doubted the future of Judea under Hyrcanus, however, in 128 BCE Antiochus VII was killed in battle against Parthia. What followed was an era of conquest led by Hyrcanus that marked the point of Judea as the most significant power in the Levant. John Hyrcanus was able to take advantage of unrest in Seleucia to assert Judean independence, in 130 BCE Demetrius II returned from exile in Hyrcania to take control of Seleucia. However, transition of power made it difficult for Demetrius to assert control over Judea, furthermore, the Seleucid Empire itself fell apart into smaller principalities

8.
Alexander Jannaeus
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To see other rulers related or affiliated with Alexander Jannaeus, see List of Hasmonean and Herodian rulers Alexander Jannaeus was the second Hasmonean king of Judaea from 103 to 76 BC. A son of John Hyrcanus, he inherited the throne from his brother Aristobulus I, from his conquests to expand the kingdom to a bloody civil war, Alexanders reign has been generalized as cruel and oppressive with never ending conflict. Although Josephus and other refer to him by the name of Alexander Yannai. Alexander Jannaeus was the son of John Hyrcanus, by his second wife. When Aristobulus I, Hyrcanus son by his first wife, became king, Aristobulus died after a reign of one year. Upon his death, his widow, Salome Alexandra had Alexander, like his father Alexander also served as the high priest. This raised the ire of the Rabbis who insisted that two offices should not be combined. This incident led the king to turn against the pharisees and persecute them until his death, Alexanders first expedition was against the city of Ptolemais. While Alexander went forward to siege the city, Zoilus, ruler of the coastal city Dora, Alexanders Hasmonean army quickly defeated Zoiluss forces with little trouble. Ptolemais and Zoilus then requested aid from Ptolemy IX Lathyros, who had been cast out by his mother Cleopatra III, Ptolemy founded a kingdom in Cyprus after being cast out by his mother. The situation at Ptolemais was seized as an opportunity by Ptolemy to possibly gain a stronghold, when Alexander formed an alliance with Ptolemy, Ptolemy in good gesture, handed over Ptolemais, Zoilus, Dora, and Stratons Tower to Alexander. As soon as Ptolemy learned of Alexanders scheme, he invaded the Galilee region capturing Asochis, Ptolemy also initiated an attack upon Sepphoris but failed. Alexander might easily have lost his crown and Judea its independence as the result of battle, had it not been for the assistance extended by Egypt. Cleopatras two Jewish generals, Helkias and Ananias, persuaded the queen of the dangers of allowing her banished son Ptolemy to remain victorious, as a result, Ptolemy was forced to withdraw to Cyprus, and Alexander was saved. The Egyptian army withdrawn, Alexander found his hands free, Alexander captured Gadara and the strong fortress Amathus in the Transjordan region, but, in an ambush set for him by Theodorus, ruler of Amathus, he lost the battle. Alexander was more successful in his expedition against the Hellenized coastal cities, capturing Raphia, finally, in 96 BC Jannaeus outlasted the inhabitants of Gaza in a year-long siege, which he occupied through treachery, and gave up to be pillaged and burned by his soldiery. This victory gained Judean control over the Mediterranean outlet for the Nabatean trade routes, the Judean Civil War initially began after the conquest of Gaza by Jannaeus around 99 BC. Due to Jannaeuss victory at Gaza, the Nabatean kingdom no longer controlled their main route to the Mediterranean Sea at Gaza

9.
Hellenistic period
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It is often considered a period of transition, sometimes even of decadence or degeneration, compared to the enlightenment of the Greek Classical era. The Hellenistic period saw the rise of New Comedy, Alexandrian poetry, the Septuagint, Greek science was advanced by the works of the mathematician Euclid and the polymath Archimedes. The religious sphere expanded to include new gods such as the Greco-Egyptian Serapis, eastern deities such as Attis and Cybele, the Hellenistic period was characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization which established Greek cities and kingdoms in Asia and Africa. This resulted in the export of Greek culture and language to new realms. Equally, however, these new kingdoms were influenced by the cultures, adopting local practices where beneficial, necessary. Hellenistic culture thus represents a fusion of the Ancient Greek world with that of the Near East, Middle East and this mixture gave rise to a common Attic-based Greek dialect, known as Koine Greek, which became the lingua franca through the Hellenistic world. Scholars and historians are divided as to what event signals the end of the Hellenistic era, Hellenistic is distinguished from Hellenic in that the first encompasses the entire sphere of direct ancient Greek influence, while the latter refers to Greece itself. The word originated from the German term hellenistisch, from Ancient Greek Ἑλληνιστής, from Ἑλλάς, Hellenistic is a modern word and a 19th-century concept, the idea of a Hellenistic period did not exist in Ancient Greece. Although words related in form or meaning, e. g, the major issue with the term Hellenistic lies in its convenience, as the spread of Greek culture was not the generalized phenomenon that the term implies. Some areas of the world were more affected by Greek influences than others. The Greek population and the population did not always mix, the Greeks moved and brought their own culture. While a few fragments exist, there is no surviving historical work which dates to the hundred years following Alexanders death. The works of the major Hellenistic historians Hieronymus of Cardia, Duris of Samos, the earliest and most credible surviving source for the Hellenistic period is Polybius of Megalopolis, a statesman of the Achaean League until 168 BC when he was forced to go to Rome as a hostage. His Histories eventually grew to a length of forty books, covering the years 220 to 167 BC, another important source, Plutarchs Parallel Lives though more preoccupied with issues of personal character and morality, outlines the history of important Hellenistic figures. Appian of Alexandria wrote a history of the Roman empire that includes information of some Hellenistic kingdoms, other sources include Justins epitome of Pompeius Trogus Historiae Philipicae and a summary of Arrians Events after Alexander, by Photios I of Constantinople. Lesser supplementary sources include Curtius Rufus, Pausanias, Pliny, in the field of philosophy, Diogenes Laertius Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is the main source. Ancient Greece had traditionally been a collection of fiercely independent city-states. After the Peloponnesian War, Greece had fallen under a Spartan hegemony, in which Sparta was pre-eminent but not all-powerful

10.
Late Middle Ages
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The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period was the period of European history generally comprising the 14th and 15th centuries. The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the modern era. Around 1300, centuries of prosperity and growth in Europe came to a halt, a series of famines and plagues, including the Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the Black Death, reduced the population to around half of what it was before the calamities. Along with depopulation came social unrest and endemic warfare, France and England experienced serious peasant uprisings, such as the Jacquerie and the Peasants Revolt, as well as over a century of intermittent conflict in the Hundred Years War. To add to the problems of the period, the unity of the Catholic Church was shattered by the Western Schism. Collectively these events are called the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages. Despite these crises, the 14th century was also a time of progress in the arts. Following a renewed interest in ancient Greek and Roman texts that took root in the High Middle Ages, combined with this influx of classical ideas was the invention of printing, which facilitated dissemination of the printed word and democratized learning. These two things would lead to the Protestant Reformation. Toward the end of the period, the Age of Discovery began, the rise of the Ottoman Empire, culminating in the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, eroded the last remnants of the Byzantine Empire and cut off trading possibilities with the east. Europeans were forced to seek new trading routes, leading to the expedition of Columbus to the Americas in 1492 and their discoveries strengthened the economy and power of European nations. The changes brought about by these developments have led scholars to view this period as the end of the Middle Ages and beginning of modern history. However, the division is artificial, since ancient learning was never entirely absent from European society. As a result there was continuity between the ancient age and the modern age. Some historians, particularly in Italy, prefer not to speak of the Late Middle Ages at all, but rather see the period of the Middle Ages transitioning to the Renaissance. The term Late Middle Ages refers to one of the three periods of the Middle Ages, along with the Early Middle Ages and the High Middle Ages, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodization in his History of the Florentine People. Flavio Biondo used a framework in Decades of History from the Deterioration of the Roman Empire. Tripartite periodization became standard after the German historian Christoph Cellarius published Universal History Divided into an Ancient, Medieval, for 18th-century historians studying the 14th and 15th centuries, the central theme was the Renaissance, with its rediscovery of ancient learning and the emergence of an individual spirit

11.
Ancient Greek
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Ancient Greek includes the forms of Greek used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BC to the 6th century AD. It is often divided into the Archaic period, Classical period. It is antedated in the second millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Hellenistic phase is known as Koine. Koine is regarded as a historical stage of its own, although in its earliest form it closely resembled Attic Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects, Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical phases of the language, Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language, divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic, Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, some dialects are found in standardized literary forms used in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms, homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic, the origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period and they have the same general outline, but differ in some of the detail. The invasion would not be Dorian unless the invaders had some relationship to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, the Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians, each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Often non-west is called East Greek, Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric, Southern Peloponnesus Doric, and Northern Peloponnesus Doric. The Lesbian dialect was Aeolic Greek and this dialect slowly replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language, which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek, by about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosized into Medieval Greek

12.
Judaean Desert
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The Judaean Desert is a desert in Israel and the West Bank that lies east of Jerusalem and descends to the Dead Sea. It stretches from the northeastern Negev to the east of Beit El and it ends in a steep escarpment dropping to the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley. The Judaean Desert is crossed by numerous wadis from northeast to southeast and has many ravines, most of them deep, the Judaean Desert is an area with a special morphological structure along the east of the Judaean Mountains. It is sometimes known as יְשִׁימוֹן‎ Yeshimon, meaning desert or wildland, or yet Wilderness of Judah or Wilderness of Judaea, the Judaean Desert lies east of Jerusalem and descends to the Dead Sea. Major urban areas in the region include Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the Gush Etzion, Jericho, the climate ranges from Mediterranean in the west and desert climate in the east, with a strip of steppe climate in the middle. The rain-fed aquifer contains an average volume of some 100 million cubic meters of water. Geography of Israel Qumran Caves Tourism in Israel Tourism in the Palestinian territories Masada Mar Saba Ein Gedi Hiking in the Judaean Desert travel guide from Wikivoyage

13.
Qumran
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Qumran is an archaeological site in the West Bank managed by Israels Qumran National Park. It is located on a dry plateau about 1.5 km from the shore of the Dead Sea, near the Israeli settlement. It is best known as the settlement nearest to the Qumran Caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were hidden, caves in the sheer cliffs and beneath. The principal excavations at Qumran were conducted by Roland de Vaux in the 1950s, since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947-1956, extensive excavations have taken place in Qumran. Most were written on parchment and some on papyrus, many scholars believe the location was home to a Jewish sect, probably the Essenes. A large cemetery was discovered to the east of the site, while most of the graves contain the remains of males, some females were also discovered, though some burials may be from medieval times. Only a small portion of the graves were excavated, as excavating cemeteries is forbidden under Jewish law, over a thousand bodies are buried at Qumran cemetery. One theory is that bodies were those of generations of sectarians, the scrolls were found in a series of eleven caves around the settlement, some accessible only through the settlement. Some scholars have claimed that the caves were the permanent libraries of the sect, other scholars believe that some caves also served as domestic shelters for those living in the area. A literary epistle published in the 1990s expresses reasons for creating a community, most of the scrolls seem to have been hidden in the caves during the turmoil of the First Jewish–Roman War, although some of them may have been deposited earlier. The site of Khirbet Qumran had been known to European explorers since the 19th century, the initial attention of the early explorers was focused on the cemetery, beginning with de Saulcy in 1851. In fact, the first excavations at Qumran were of burials in the cemetery, rev. Albert Isaacs, British counsel James Finn, and photographer James Graham visited Qumran in December 1856. Isaacs stated regarding Qumrans tower, It can hardly be doubted that this formed a tower or stronghold of some kind, the situation is commanding, and well adapted for defensive operations. Finn later suggested Qumran was some ancient fort with a cistern, the British scholar Ernest William Gurney Masterman visited Qumran on several occasions between 1900 and 1901. After observing the positioning of Qumran atop a plateau overlooking the ‘Ein Feshkha Springs, Masterman also questioned why a small fort would require a graveyard of over one thousand tombs. Gustaf Dalman visited Qumran in 1914, and explicitly identified Qumran as a burg, full-scale work at the site began after Roland de Vaux and G. Lankester Harding in 1949 excavated what became known as Cave 1, the first scroll-bearing cave. A cursory surface survey that year produced nothing of interest, and this analysis yielded traces of pottery closely related to that found in Cave 1. This discovery led to excavations at the site over a period of six seasons under the direction of de Vaux

14.
Jerusalem
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Jerusalem is a city located on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is considered a city in the three major Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, the part of Jerusalem called the City of David was settled in the 4th millennium BCE. In 1538, walls were built around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent, today those walls define the Old City, which has been traditionally divided into four quarters—known since the early 19th century as the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger, Modern Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old Citys boundaries. These foundational events, straddling the dawn of the 1st millennium BCE, the sobriquet of holy city was probably attached to Jerusalem in post-exilic times. The holiness of Jerusalem in Christianity, conserved in the Septuagint which Christians adopted as their own authority, was reinforced by the New Testament account of Jesuss crucifixion there, in Sunni Islam, Jerusalem is the third-holiest city, after Mecca and Medina. As a result, despite having an area of only 0, outside the Old City stands the Garden Tomb. Today, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the issues in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, West Jerusalem was among the captured and later annexed by Israel while East Jerusalem, including the Old City, was captured. Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently annexed it into Jerusalem, one of Israels Basic Laws, the 1980 Jerusalem Law, refers to Jerusalem as the countrys undivided capital. All branches of the Israeli government are located in Jerusalem, including the Knesset, the residences of the Prime Minister and President, the international community does not recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, and the city hosts no foreign embassies. Jerusalem is also home to some non-governmental Israeli institutions of importance, such as the Hebrew University. In 2011, Jerusalem had a population of 801,000, of which Jews comprised 497,000, Muslims 281,000, a city called Rušalim in the Execration texts of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt is widely, but not universally, identified as Jerusalem. Jerusalem is called Urušalim in the Amarna letters of Abdi-Heba, the name Jerusalem is variously etymologized to mean foundation of the god Shalem, the god Shalem was thus the original tutelary deity of the Bronze Age city. The form Yerushalem or Yerushalayim first appears in the Bible, in the Book of Joshua, according to a Midrash, the name is a combination of Yhwh Yireh and the town Shalem. The earliest extra-biblical Hebrew writing of the word Jerusalem is dated to the sixth or seventh century BCE and was discovered in Khirbet Beit Lei near Beit Guvrin in 1961. The inscription states, I am Yahweh thy God, I will accept the cities of Judah and I will redeem Jerusalem, or as other scholars suggest, the mountains of Judah belong to him, to the God of Jerusalem

15.
Salome Alexandra
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Salome Alexandra or Alexandra of Jerusalem, was one of only two women to rule over Judea. Her personal genealogy is not given by Josephus, rabbinical sources designate the Sage Simeon b. If this is meant literally and is true, she was the daughter of Setah Bar Yossei, Salome Alexandras oldest son by Alexander Jannaeus was Hyrcanus II who fought his younger brother Aristobulus II in the 60s BC over the Jewish High Priesthood. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, Alexandra was instrumental in arranging the assassination of her brother-in-law, Antigonus, upon the death of Aristobulus in 103 BCE, Aristobulus widow freed his half-brother, Alexander Jannaeus, who had been held in prison. Alexandra does not seem to have been able to prevent the persecution of that sect by her husband. According to archaeologist Kenneth Atkinson, “There are also passages in the Talmud that say, during her husband’s reign, that she protected Pharisees and hid Pharisees from his wrath. ”Nevertheless, the married life of the royal pair seems to have ended cordially, on his deathbed Alexander entrusted the government, not to his sons. Her next concern was to open negotiations with the leaders of the Pharisees, having been given assurances as to her future policy, they declared themselves ready to give Alexanders remains the obsequies due to a monarch. By this step she avoided any public affront to the dead king and this might have been attended with dangerous results to the Hasmonean dynasty. Alexandra received the reins of government at Jannaeus camp before Ragaba, Alexandra managed to secure assent to a Hasmonean monarchy from the Pharisees, who had suffered intense misery under Alexander and became Judeas ruling class. The Pharisees, who had suffered intense misery under Alexander, now not only a tolerated section of the community. Alexandra installed as high priest her eldest son, Hyrcanus II a man wholly after the heart of the Pharisees and this body had hitherto been, as it were, a house of lords, the members of which belonged to the highest rabbinical court. From this time it became a court for the administration of justice and religious matters. The Sadducees were moved to petition the queen for protection against the ruling party, Alexandra, who desired to avoid all party conflict, removed the Sadducees from Jerusalem, assigning certain fortified towns for their residence. As well, she did not abstain from actual warfare, she sent her son Aristobulus with an army to besiege Damascus, the expedition was reportedly without result. Nevertheless, the last days of her reign were tumultuous and her son Aristobulus endeavored to seize the government, and succeeded her after her death. Rabbinical sources still further magnify the prosperity which Judea enjoyed under Alexandra, the fertility of the soil was so great that the grains of wheat grew as large as kidney beans, oats as large as olives, and lentils as large as gold denarii. The sages collected specimens of these grains and preserved them to future generations the reward of obedience to the Law. Shlomtzion, derived from the name, is sometimes used as a female first name in contemporary Israel

16.
Josephus
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Josephus claimed the Jewish Messianic prophecies that initiated the First Roman-Jewish War made reference to Vespasian becoming Emperor of Rome. In response Vespasian decided to keep Josephus as a slave and interpreter, after Vespasian became Emperor in 69 CE, he granted Josephus his freedom, at which time Josephus assumed the emperors family name of Flavius. Flavius Josephus fully defected to the Roman side and was granted Roman citizenship and he became an advisor and friend of Vespasians son Titus, serving as his translator when Titus led the Siege of Jerusalem. Since the siege proved ineffective at stopping the Jewish revolt, the citys destruction, Josephus recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the first century CE and the First Jewish–Roman War, including the Siege of Masada. His most important works were The Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews, the Jewish War recounts the Jewish revolt against Roman occupation. Antiquities of the Jews recounts the history of the world from a Jewish perspective for an ostensibly Roman audience and these works provide valuable insight into first century Judaism and the background of Early Christianity. Josephus introduces himself in Greek as Iōsēpos, son of Matthias and he was the second-born son of Matthias. His older full-blooded brother was also called Matthias and their mother was an aristocratic woman who descended from the royal and formerly ruling Hasmonean dynasty. Josephuss paternal grandparents were Josephus and his wife—an unnamed Hebrew noblewoman, distant relatives of each other and he descended through his father from the priestly order of the Jehoiarib, which was the first of the 24 orders of priests in the Temple in Jerusalem. Josephus was a descendant of the high priest Jonathon, born and raised in Jerusalem, Josephus was educated alongside his brother. In his early twenties, he traveled to negotiate with Emperor Nero for the release of 12 Jewish priests, Josephus successfully fought the Roman army in Galilee, until he was captured by the Romans during the height of the war. After the Jewish garrison of Yodfat fell under siege, the Romans invaded, killing thousands, according to Josephus, he was trapped in a cave with 40 of his companions in July 67 CE. The Romans asked the group to surrender, but they refused, Josephus suggested a method of collective suicide, they drew lots and killed each other, one by one, counting to every third person. Two men were left, who surrendered to the Roman forces, in 69 CE, Josephus was released. According to his account, he acted as a negotiator with the defenders during the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, in which his parents and first wife died. While being confined at Yodfat, Josephus claimed to have experienced a divine revelation, after the prediction came true, he was released by Vespasian, who considered his gift of prophecy to be divine. In 71 CE, he went to Rome in the entourage of Titus, becoming a Roman citizen, in addition to Roman citizenship, he was granted accommodation in conquered Judaea and a decent, if not extravagant, pension. While in Rome and under Flavian patronage, Josephus wrote all of his known works, although he uses Josephus, he appears to have taken the Roman praenomen Titus and nomen Flavius from his patrons

17.
Machaerus
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Machaerus is a fortified hilltop palace located in Jordan 25 km southeast of the mouth of the Jordan river on the eastern side of the Dead Sea. According to Flavius Josephus, it is the location of the imprisonment, according to the chronology of the Bible, this infamous execution took place in 32 AD shortly before the Passover, following an imprisonment of two years. The fortress Machaerus was originally built by the Hasmonean king, Alexander Jannaeus in about the year 90 BC and its high, rocky vantage point was difficult to access, and invasions from the east could be easily spotted from there. It was also in line of sight of other Hasmonean citadels, nevertheless, it was destroyed by Pompeys general Gabinius in 57 BC, but later rebuilt by Herod the Great in 30 BC to be used as a military base to safeguard his territories east of the Jordan. Upon the death of Herod the Great, the fortress was passed to his son, Herod Antipas and it was during this time, at the beginning of the first century AD, that John the Baptist was imprisoned and beheaded at Machaerus. After the deposition and banishment of Herod Antipas in 39 AD, Machaerus passed to Herod Agrippa I until his death in 44 AD, Jewish rebels took control after 66 AD during the First Jewish Revolt. Shortly after defeating the Jewish garrison of Herodium, the Roman legate Lucilius Bassus advanced on Machaerus with his troops, an embankment and ramp were created in order to facilitate Roman siege engines but the Jewish rebels capitulated before the Roman attack had begun. The rebels were allowed to leave and the fortress was torn down, Josephus gives a full description of Machaerus in The Wars of the Jews 7.6.1 ff. The hilltop, which stands about 1,100 meters above Dead Sea level, is surrounded on all sides by deep ravines which provide great natural strength, the valley on the west extends 60 stadia to the Dead Sea. The valley on the east descends to a depth of a hundred cubits, Herod the Great regarded the place as deserving the strongest fortification, particularly because of its proximity to Arabia. On top of the mountain, surrounding the crest, he built a wall,100 meters long and 60 meters wide with three corner towers, each sixty cubits high. The palace was built in the center of the fortified area, numerous cisterns were provided to collect rain water. The royal courtyard is considered one of the closest and best existing archaeological parallels to the Herodian Gabbatha in the Jerusalem Praetorium, the village on the plateau to the east of the mountain is known as Muqāwir. The site was visited in 1807 by the Frisian explorer Ulrich Jasper Seetzen, in 1973, the German scholar, August Strobel, identified and studied the wall by which the Romans encircled the defenders within the fortress. In 1978-1981, excavations were carried out by Virgilio Corbo, Stanislao Loffreda and Michele Piccirillo, the ruins remain in remarkably untouched condition to this day. Within the fortified area are the ruins of the Herodian palace, including rooms, a courtyard. Farther down the slope of the hill are other walls and towers, perhaps representing the lower town. Traceable also, coming from the east, is the aqueduct brought water to the cisterns of the fortress

18.
Alexandrium
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It was likely named after Hasmonean king Alexander Jannæus. The fortress called Alexandreion in Greek, simplified to Alexandrion and Latinised to Alexandrium, is mentioned by Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews and it was mentioned in the Mishna and Talmud as Sartaba, and is now called Qarn Sartabe in Arabic. Alexandrium was constructed by the Hasmoneans near the border with Samaria to accommodate a military garrison and it is later mentioned during Pompey the Greats conquest of Judea as a stronghold of Aristobulus II. Herod gave it the character of a palatial desert fortress, similar to those he built or rebuilt at Masada, Herodion, Herod used the fortress as a prison for his political opponents, holding his wife Mariamne and her mother Alexandra there in 30 BCE. It was also the site of Alexander and Aristobulus, two of his sons Herod had executed at Sebaste in 7 BCE. Alexandrium was finally razed by Vespasian or Titus during the Great Revolt, auburn and Buffalo, New York, John E. Beardsley. The Forts of Judaea 168 BC – AD73

19.
Pharisees
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The Pharisees /ˈfærəˌsiːz/ were at various times a political party, a social movement, and a school of thought in the Holy Land during the time of Second Temple Judaism. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Pharisaic beliefs became the foundational, liturgical, conflicts between Pharisees and Sadducees took place in the context of much broader and longstanding social and religious conflicts among Jews, made worse by the Roman conquest. Another conflict was cultural, between those who favored Hellenization and those who resisted it, a third was juridico-religious, between those who emphasized the importance of the Second Temple with its rites and services, and those who emphasized the importance of other Mosaic Laws. Josephus, believed by historians to be a Pharisee, estimated the total Pharisee population before the fall of the Second Temple to be around 6,000. Josephus claimed that Pharisees received the full-support and goodwill of the people, apparently in contrast to the more elite Sadducees. The phrase common people in Josephus writings suggests that most Jews were just Jewish people, outside of Jewish history and literature, Pharisees have been made notable by references in the New Testament to conflicts with John the Baptist and with Jesus. There are also references in the New Testament to the Apostle Paul being a Pharisee. The relationship between Early Christianity and Pharisees was not always hostile however, e. g. Gamaliel is often cited as a Pharisaic leader who was sympathetic to Christians, other sects emerged at this time, such as the Early Christians in Jerusalem and the Therapeutae in Egypt. Judah haNasi redacted the Mishnah, a codification of Pharisaic interpretations. Most of the authorities quoted in the Mishnah lived after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, however, none of the Rabbinic sources include identifiable eyewitness accounts of the Pharisees and their teachings. During the 70-year exile in Babylon, Jewish houses of assembly and houses of prayer were the meeting places for prayer. In 539 BCE the Persians conquered Babylon, and in 537 BCE Cyrus the Great allowed Jews to return to Judea and he did not, however, allow the restoration of the Judean monarchy, which left the Judean priests as the dominant authority. Without the constraining power of the monarchy, the authority of the Temple in civic life was amplified and it was around this time that the Sadducee party emerged as the party of priests and allied elites. However, the Second Temple, which was completed in 515 BCE, had constructed under the auspices of a foreign power. The Temple was no longer the only institution for Jewish religious life, after the building of the Second Temple in the time of Ezra the Scribe, the houses of study and worship remained important secondary institutions in Jewish life. Outside of Judea, the synagogue was often called a house of prayer, while most Jews could not regularly attend the Temple service, they could meet at the synagogue for morning, afternoon and evening prayers. On Mondays, Thursdays and Shabbats, a weekly Torah portion was read publicly in the synagogues, although priests controlled the rituals of the Temple, the scribes and sages, later called rabbis, dominated the study of the Torah. These sages maintained a tradition that they believed had originated at Mount Sinai alongside the Torah of Moses

20.
Aristobulus II
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Aristobulus II /ˌærᵻstəˈbjuːləs/ was the Jewish High Priest and King of Judea,66 BC to 63 BC, from the Hasmonean Dynasty. Aristobulus was the son of Alexander Jannaeus, King and High Priest. After the death of Alexander in 76 BC, his widow succeeded to the rule of Judea, when Salome died in 67 BC, Hyrcanus succeeded to the kingship as well. Aristobulus shared his fathers views on religion and politics. He entertained designs upon the throne, even during the life of his mother and he courted the nobles and military party by constituting himself the patron of the Sadducees and bringing their cause before the queen. The queen sought to direct his military zeal outside Judea, and sent him against Ptolemy Mennæi and he left Jerusalem secretly and betook himself to his friends, who controlled the largest number of fortified places, with the intention of making war against his aged mother. But the queen died at the moment, and he immediately turned his weapons against his brother Hyrcanus. Hyrcanus seemed to be sympathetic to the Sadducees just like his father Alexander Jannaeus, Aristobulus rebelled against his elder brother. Because of this conflict, the Pharisees seemed to be in a position at this time. Hyrcanus advanced against Aristobulus at the head of his mercenaries and his followers, the brothers met in battle near Jericho and many of Hyrcanus soldiers went over to Aristobulus, and thereby gave the latter the victory. Hyrcanus took refuge in the citadel of Jerusalem, but the capture of the Temple by Aristobulus compelled Hyrcanus to surrender. A peace was concluded, according to the terms of which Hyrcanus was to renounce the throne and the office of high priest. This agreement however did not last, as Antipater convinced Hyrcanus that Aristobulus was planning his death and to take refuge with Aretas III, the Nabataeans advanced toward Jerusalem with an army of 50,000 and besieged the city for several months. During this civil war, the Roman general Pompey defeated the Kingdoms of Pontus and he sent his deputy Marcus Aemilius Scaurus to take possession of Seleucid Syria. As the Hasmoneans were allies of the Romans, both brothers appealed to Scaurus, each endeavoring by gifts and promises to win him over to his side, Scaurus, moved by a gift of 400 talents, decided in favor of Aristobulus and ordered Aretas to withdraw his army. During his retreat, the Nabateans suffered a defeat at the hands of Aristobulus. When Pompey arrived in Syria in 63 BC, both brothers and a party that desired the removal of the entire dynasty, sent their delegates to Pompey. He favoured Hyrcanus II over Aristobulus II, deeming the elder, weaker brother a more reliable ally of the Roman Empire, Pompey defeated the Jewish armies in multiple battles, and took the fortresses of Judea

21.
Aulus Gabinius
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Aulus Gabinius was a Roman statesman, general and supporter of Pompey. He was a prominent figure in the days of the Roman Republic. By two other measures of Gabinius, loans of money to foreign ambassadors in Rome were made non-actionable, in 65 BC, then a legate to Pompey, he marched with two legions into Northern Mesopotamia. This pressured the Parthian king Phraates III into a treaty with Pompey, during his term of office he aided Publius Clodius Pulcher in bringing about the exile of Marcus Tullius Cicero. In 57 BC Gabinius went as proconsul to Syria, on his arrival he reinstated Hyrcanus II in the high-priesthood at Jerusalem, suppressed revolts, introduced important changes in the government of Judaea, and rebuilt several towns. In 55 BC, Gabinius was sent by Pompey to Egypt, without the consent of the Senate and he succeeded in fulfilling his task after a short successful campaign, in which he was supported by the young Mark Antony. He left a part of his troops, the so-called Gabiniani and these Gabiniani fought against rebellious subjects of the king and later, after his death, against Gaius Julius Caesar. During Gabinius absence in Egypt, Syria had been devastated by robbers, with some difficulty Gabinius restored order, and in 54 BC handed over the province to his successor, Marcus Licinius Crassus. Nothing but Ciceros wish to do a favour to Pompey could have induced him to take on the task, the third charge, that of ambitus, was consequently dropped, Gabinius went into exile, and his property was confiscated. After the outbreak of Caesars Civil War, he was recalled by Gaius Julius Caesar in 49 BC and entered his service, after the Battle of Pharsalus, he was commissioned to transport some recently levied troops to Illyricum. On his way by land, he was attacked by the Dalmatians, there he defended himself against the attacks of the Pompeian commander, Marcus Octavius, but a few months later died of illness. Gabinius married a Roman noblewoman called Lollia from the Lollia, perhaps a daughter of Marcus Lollius Palicanus, Lollia bore him a son called Aulus Gabinius Sisenna. 13, Post reditum in senatu, 4-8, Pro lege Manilia,17,18,19 exhaustive article by Bähr in Ersch and Grubers Allgemeine Encyclopädie Giuseppe Stocchi, Aulo Gabinio e i suoi processi

22.
Hyrcanus II
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John Hyrcanus II /hərˈkeɪnəs/, a member of the Hasmonean dynasty, was for a long time the Jewish High Priest in the 1st century BCE. He was also briefly King of Judea 67–66 BCE and then the ethnarch of Judea probably 47–40 BCE, Hyrcanus was the eldest son of Alexander Jannaeus, King and High Priest, and Alexandra Salome. After the death of Alexander in 76 BC, his widow succeeded to the rule of Judea, Alexander had numerous conflicts with the Pharisees. So Hyrcanus was believed to be supported by the Sadducees, especially later in his tenure, when Salome died in 67 BC, she named Hyrcanus as successor to the Kingship as well. Hyrcanus had scarcely reigned three months when his younger brother Aristobulus II rose in rebellion, Hyrcanus advanced against him at the head of his mercenaries and his followers. The brothers met in battle near Jericho and many of Hyrcanus soldiers went over to Aristobulus II, Hyrcanus took refuge in the citadel of Jerusalem, but the capture of the Temple by Aristobulus II compelled Hyrcanus to surrender. A peace was concluded, according to the terms of which Hyrcanus was to renounce the throne and the office of high priest. This agreement however did not last, as Hyrcanus feared that Aristobulus was planning his death, such fears were furthered by Hyrcanus adviser Antipater the Idumean. According to Josephus, Antipater aimed at controlling Judea by putting the weak Hyrcanus back onto the throne. Hyrcanus took refuge with Aretas III, King of the Nabataeans, the Nabataeans advanced toward Jerusalem with an army of 50,000, took the city and besieged the Temple where Aristobulus had taken refuge for several months. During this civil war, the Roman general Pompey defeated the Kingdoms of Pontus and he sent his deputy Marcus Aemilius Scaurus to take possession of Seleucid Syria. As the Hasmoneans were allies of the Romans, both brothers appealed to Scaurus, each endeavoring by gifts and promises to win him over to his side, Scaurus, moved by a gift of 400 talents, decided in favor of Aristobulus and ordered Aretas to withdraw his army. During his retreat, the Nabateans suffered a defeat at the hands of Aristobulus. When Pompey arrived in Syria in 63 BC, both brothers and a party that desired the removal of the entire dynasty, sent their delegates to Pompey. He favoured Hyrcanus over Aristobulus, deeming the elder, weaker brother a more reliable ally of the Roman Empire. Aristobulus, suspicious of Pompey, entrenched himself in the fortress of Alexandrium, however, since many of his followers were unwilling to open the gates, the Romans besieged and captured the city by force, badly damaging city and temple. Aristobulus was taken to Rome a prisoner and Hyrcanus restored, around 63 BCE, Hyrcanus was restored to his position as High Priest but not to the Kingship. Political authority rested with the Romans whose interests were represented by Antipater, in 47 BC, Julius Caesar restored some political authority to Hyrcanus by appointing him ethnarch

23.
Strabo
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Strabo was a Greek geographer, philosopher, and historian who lived in Asia Minor during the transitional period of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus, Strabos life was characterized by extensive travels. He journeyed to Egypt and Kush, as far west as coastal Tuscany and as far south as Ethiopia in addition to his travels in Asia Minor and the time he spent in Rome. Travel throughout the Mediterranean and Near East, especially for scholarly purposes, was popular during this era and was facilitated by the relative peace enjoyed throughout the reign of Augustus. He moved to Rome in 44 BC, and stayed there, studying and writing, in 29 BC, on his way to Corinth, he visited the island of Gyaros in the Aegean Sea. Around 25 BC, he sailed up the Nile until reaching Philae and it is not known precisely when Strabos Geography was written, though comments within the work itself place the finished version within the reign of Emperor Tiberius. Some place its first drafts around 7 BC, others around 17 or 18 AD, the latest passage to which a date can be assigned is his reference to the death in AD23 of Juba II, king of Maurousia, who is said to have died just recently. He probably worked on the Geography for many years and revised it steadily, on the presumption that recently means within a year, Strabo stopped writing that year or the next, when he died. The first of Strabos major works, Historical Sketches, written while he was in Rome, is completely lost. Strabo studied under several prominent teachers of various specialties throughout his life at different stops along his Mediterranean travels. His first chapter of education took place in Nysa under the master of rhetoric Aristodemus, Strabo was an admirer of Homers poetry, perhaps a consequence of his time spent in Nysa with Aristodemus. At around the age of 21, Strabo moved to Rome, where he studied philosophy with the Peripatetic Xenarchus, despite Xenarchuss Aristotelian leanings, Strabo later gives evidence to have formed his own Stoic inclinations. In Rome, he learned grammar under the rich and famous scholar Tyrannion of Amisus. Although Tyrannion was also a Peripatetic, he was more relevantly a respected authority on geography, the final noteworthy mentor to Strabo was Athenodorus Cananites, a philosopher who had spent his life since 44 BC in Rome forging relationships with the Roman elite. Athenodorus endowed to Strabo three important items, his philosophy, his knowledge, and his contacts, moreover, from his own first-hand experience, Athenodorus provided Strabo with information about regions of the empire which he would not otherwise have known. Strabo is most notable for his work Geographica, which presented a history of people. Although the Geographica was rarely utilized in its antiquity, a multitude of copies survived throughout the Byzantine Empire. It first appeared in Western Europe in Rome as a Latin translation issued around 1469, the first Greek edition was published in 1516 in Venice

24.
Pompey
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Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, usually known in English as Pompey /ˈpɒmpiː/ or Pompey the Great, was a military and political leader of the late Roman Republic. He came from a wealthy Italian provincial background, and his father had been the first to establish the family among the Roman nobility, Pompeys immense success as a general while still very young enabled him to advance directly to his first consulship without meeting the normal requirements for office. His success as a commander in Sullas Second Civil War resulted in Sulla bestowing the nickname Magnus. He was consul three times and celebrated three triumphs, after the deaths of Julia and Crassus, Pompey sided with the optimates, the conservative faction of the Roman Senate. Pompey and Caesar then contended for the leadership of the Roman state, when Pompey was defeated at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC, he sought refuge in Egypt, where he was assassinated. His career and defeat are significant in Romes subsequent transformation from Republic to Empire, Pompeys family first gained the position of Consul in 141 BC. Pompeys father, Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, was an equestrian from Picenum. He fought the Social War against Romes Italian allies and he supported Sulla, who belonged to the optimates, the pro-aristocracy faction, against Marius, who belonged to the populares, in Sullas first civil war. He died during the siege of Rome by the Marians in 87 BC, either as a casualty of an epidemic and his twenty-year-old son Pompey inherited his estates, and the loyalty of his legions. Pompey had served two years under his fathers command, and had participated in the part of the Social War. When his father died, Pompey was put on due to accusations that his father stole public property. As his father’s heir Pompey could be held to account and he discovered that this was committed by one of his fathers freedmen. Following his preliminary bouts with his accuser, the took a liking to Pompey and offered his daughter. Another civil war broke out between the Marians and Sulla, Cassius Dio added that Pompey had sent a detachment to pursue him, but he outstripped them by crossing the River Phasis. He reached the Maeotis and stayed in the Cimmerian Bosporus and he had his son Machares, who ruled it and gone over to the Romans, killed and recovered that country. Meanwhile, Pompey set up a colony for his soldiers at Nicopolitans in Cappadocia, in Plutarchs account Pompey was invited to invade Armenia by Tigranes’ son, who rebelled against his father. The two men received the submission of several towns, when they got close Artaxata Tigranes, knowing Pompey’s leniency, surrendered and allowed a Roman garrison in his palace. Pompey offered the restitution of the Armenian territories in Syria, Phoenicia, Cilicia, Galatia and he demanded an indemnity and ruled that the son should be king of Sophene

25.
Herod the Great
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Herod, also known as Herod the Great and Herod I, was a Roman client king of Judea, referred to as the Herodian kingdom. Vital details of his life are recorded in the works of the 1st century CE Roman–Jewish historian Josephus, Herod also appears in the Christian Gospel of Matthew as the ruler of Judea who orders the Massacre of the Innocents at the time of the birth of Jesus. Despite his successes, including singlehandedly forging a new aristocracy from practically nothing and his reign polarizes opinion amongst scholars and historians, some viewing his legacy as evidence of success, or a reminder of his tyrannical rule. It is generally accepted that Herod was born around 73 BCE in Idumea, however, some authors think that he was born in about 72/71 BCE. He was the son of Antipater the Idumaean, a high-ranked official under ethnarch Hyrcanus II, and Cypros. Herods father was by descent an Edomite whose ancestors had converted to Judaism, Herod was raised as a Jew. A loyal supporter of Hyrcanus II, Antipater appointed his son governor of Galilee in 47 BCE and his elder brother, Phasael, was appointed governor of Jerusalem. Herod enjoyed the backing of Rome, but his brutality was condemned by the Sanhedrin, in 41 BCE, Herod and his brother Phasael, were named as tetrarchs by the Roman leader Mark Antony. They were placed in this role to support Hyrcanus II, later, Antigonus, Hyrcanus nephew, took the throne from his uncle with the help of the Parthians. Herod fled to Rome to plead with the Romans to restore Hyrcanus II to power, the Romans had a special interest in Judea because their general Pompey the Great had conquered Jerusalem in 63 BCE, thus placing the region in the Roman sphere of influence. In Rome, Herod was unexpectedly appointed King of the Jews by the Roman Senate, Josephus puts this in the year of the consulship of Calvinus and Pollio, but Appian places it in 39 BCE. Herod went back to Judea to win his kingdom from Antigonus, toward the end of the campaign against Antigonus, Herod married the granddaughter of Hyrcanus II, Mariamne, who was also a niece of Antigonus. Herod did this in an attempt to secure his claim to the throne, however, Herod already had a wife, Doris, and a young son, Antipater, and chose therefore to banish Doris and her child. After three years of conflict, Herod and the Romans finally captured Jerusalem and Herod sent Antigonus for execution to Marc Antony, Herod took the role as sole ruler of Judea and the title of basileus for himself, ushering in the Herodian Dynasty and ending the Hasmonean Dynasty. Josephus reports this as being in the year of the consulship of Agrippa and Gallus, but also says that it was exactly 27 years after Jerusalem fell to Pompey, cassius Dio also reports that in 37 BCE the Romans accomplished nothing worthy of note in the area. According to Josephus, Herod ruled for 37 years,34 of them after capturing Jerusalem, as Herods family were converts to Judaism, his religious commitment was questioned by some elements of Jewish society. Herod later executed several members of his own family, including his wife Mariamne I, Herods rule marked a new beginning in the history of Judea. Judea had been ruled autonomously by the Hasmonean kings from 140 BCE until 63 BCE, the Hasmoneans retained their titles, but became clients of Rome after the conquest by Pompey in 63 BCE

26.
Antigonus II Mattathias
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Antigonus II Mattathias, also known as Antigonus the Hasmonean was the last Hasmonean king of Judea. He was the son of King Aristobulus II of Judea, in 37 BCE Herod handed him over to the Romans for execution, after Antigonuss three-year reign during which he led the Jews fierce struggle for independence against the Romans. Antigonus the Hasmonean was the son of Aristobulus II. He escaped and returned to Judea in 57 BCE, despite an unsuccessful attempt to oppose the Roman forces there, the senate released him, but he refused to surrender his dynastic rights. He visited Julius Cæsar, who was in Syria in 47, in 42, he attempted to seize the government of Judea by force with the assistance of his brother-in-law, Ptolemy Mennei but was defeated by Herod. The excessive taxation wrung from the people to pay for the extravagances of Antony, Antigonus gained the adherence of both the aristocratic class in Jerusalem and the leaders of the Pharisees. The Parthians, who invaded Syria in 40 BCE, preferred to see an anti-Roman ruler on the throne of Judea, when Antigonus promised them large sums of gold and five hundred female slaves besides, they put a troop of five hundred warriors at his disposal. Hyrcanus was sent to Babylon after suffering the mutilation of his ears, in 40 BCE Antigonus was officially proclaimed king and high priest by the Parthians. His three-year reign was a continuous struggle, Herod succeeded in having himself declared king of Judea by Rome. On Herods return from Rome in 39 BCE he opened a campaign against Antigonus, in the spring of 38 BCE, Herod wrested control of the province of Galilee and eventually all of Judea as far as Jerusalem. Due to the approach of winter, Herod postponed his siege of Jerusalem, where Antigonus, Herod was held off for 3–5 months but the Romans did eventually capture the city, however, the supporters of Antigonus fought until the Romans reached the inner courtyard of the Temple. Antigonus was taken to Antioch and executed, ending Hasmonean rule, josephus states that Marc Antony beheaded Antigonus (Antiquities, XV1,2. In his Life of Antony, Plutarch claims that Antony had Antigonus beheaded, biblical scholar Gregory Doudna proposed in 2013 that Antigonus II Mattathias was the figure known as the Wicked Priest in the Qumran Scrolls. According to Doudna, Antigonus was the underlying the Wicked Priest of Pesher Habakkuk, and the doomed ruler of Pesher Nahum. List of Hasmonean and Herodian rulers Antigonus entry in historical sourcebook by Mahlon H. Smith

27.
Sabbas the Sanctified
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Saint Sabbas the Sanctified, a Cappadocian-Syrian monk, priest and saint, lived mainly in Palaestina Prima. He was the founder of monasteries, most notably the one known as Mar Saba. The Saints name is derived from Aramaic סַבָּא meaning old man, St Sabbas was born the son of John, a military commander, and Sophia, at Mutalaska near Caesarea of Cappadocia. The name of the village has no meaning in Greek. Journeying to Alexandria on military matters, his parents left their son in the care of an uncle. When the boy reached eight years of age, he entered the monastery of Bishop Flavian of Antioch. The gifted child quickly learned to read and became an expert on the Holy Scriptures, Sabbas resisted his parents pressure to return to the world and enter into marriage. When he was seventeen years old he received monastic tonsure, after spending ten years at the monastery of Bishop Flavian, he went to Jerusalem, and from there to the monastery of Saint Euthymius the Great. But Euthymius sent Sabbas to Abba Theoctistus, the head of a monastery with a strict cenobitic rule. Sabbas lived in obedience at this monastery until the age of thirty, after the death of the Elder Theoctistus, his successor blessed Sabbas to seclude himself in a cave. On Saturdays, however, he left his hermitage and came to the monastery, after a certain time Sabbas received permission not to leave his hermitage at all, and he lived in isolation in the cave for five years. Euthymius attentively directed the life of the monk, and seeing his spiritual maturity. They set out each January 14 and remained there until Palm Sunday, Euthymius called Sabbas a child-elder, and encouraged him to grow in the monastic virtues. When Euthymius died, Sabbas withdrew from the lavra and moved to a cave near the monastery of St. Gerasimus of Jordan, after several years, disciples began to gather around Sabbas, seeking the monastic life. As the number of monks increased, the Great Lavra sprang up, the traditional dating of the founding of this lavra in the Kidron Valley, south of Jerusalem, is 484. Because some of his monks opposed his rule and demanded a priest as their abbot, the opposition continued and he withdrew to the New Lavra which he had built near Thekoa. In the lavras the young monks lived a life, but the elders a semi-eremitical one, each in his own hut within the precincts of the lavra. Patriarch Salustius of Jerusalem ordained him in 491 and appointed him archimandrite of all the monasteries in Palaestina Prima in 494, Sabbas composed the first monastic rule of church services, the so-called Jerusalem Typikon, for guidance of all the Byzantine monasteries

28.
Cenobitic monasticism
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Cenobitic monasticism is a monastic tradition that stresses community life. Often in the West, the community belongs to an order and the life of the cenobitic monk is regulated by a religious rule. The older style of monasticism, to live as a hermit, is called eremitic, a third form of monasticism, found primarily in the East, is the skete. The English words cenobite and cenobitic are derived, via Latin, from the Greek words koinos, common, the adjective can also be cenobiac. A group of living in community is often referred to as a cenobium. Cenobitic monasticism exists in various religions, although Buddhist and Christian cenobitic monasticism are the most prominent. The word Cenobites was initially applied to the followers of Pythagoras in Crotona, Italy, who founded a commune not just for philosophical study but also for the amicable sharing of worldly goods. In the 1st century CE, Philo of Alexandria describes a Jewish ascetic community of men and women on the shores of Lake Mareotis in the vicinity of Alexandria, members of the community composed books of midrash, an allegorical method for interpreting scripture. Every seventh sabbath was accorded a festival of learning and singing, the organized version of Christian cenobitic monasticism is commonly thought to have started in Egypt in the 4th century AD. Christian monks of previous centuries were usually hermits, especially in the Middle East and this form of solitary living, however, did not suit everyone. Some monks found the style to be too lonely and difficult, and if one was not spiritually prepared. For this reason, organized monastic communities were established so that monks could have support in their spiritual struggle. While eremitic monks did have an element of socializing, since they would meet once a week to pray together, the cenobitic monks also practised more socializing because the monasteries where they lived were often located in or near inhabited villages. Cenobitic monks were also different from their predecessors and counterparts in their actual living arrangements. Whereas the eremitic monks lived alone in a monastery consisting of merely a hut or cave, in the latter case, each dwelling would house about twenty monks, and within the house there were separate rooms or cells that would be inhabited by two or three monks. This structure of living for the cenobitic monks has been attributed to the man that is usually hailed as the father of cenobitic monasticism. Pachomius is thought to have got the idea for living quarters like these from the time he spent in the Roman army, as the style is very reminiscent of army barracks. The account of how Pachomius was given the idea to start a monastery is found in Palladius of Galatias The Lausiac History

29.
Lavra
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A lavra or laura is a type of monastery consisting of a cluster of cells or caves for hermits, with a church and sometimes a refectory at the center. It is erected within the Orthodox and other Eastern Christian traditions, the term in Greek initially meant a narrow lane or an alley in a city. The Greek term lavra was employed from the century on specifically for the semi-eremitical monastic settlements of the Judean desert. The first lauras of Palestine were founded by St. Chariton, the Laura of Pharan, Saint Euthymius the Great founded one of the early Lavras in fifth-century Palestine. The Lavra of Saint Sabbas the Sanctified, known as Mar Saba, is one of the most ancient, weekdays were spent in the cells, accompanied only by a rush mat, a small amount of food and palm blades with which to make ropes and baskets. On Saturdays they would bring their handiwork to the coenobium and receive communion together, cells were left open, and those in need could take whatever they wished from the cell if it were found empty. The lavra had a priest, the contact with the outside world. Unless proven otherwise by future scholarship, this seems to be theirs alone. It was a community of 600 hermits who lived scattered over the area, reliant on the town of Nitria for bread, the Great Lavra founded by Athanasius the Athonite in 963 is the oldest monastery on Mount Athos. The largest and the most important Russian Orthodox monasteries have been called lavras and have been subordinated directly to the Patriarch of Moscow, in 1721, they became subordinated to the Holy Synod. Sabbas Polish Orthodox Church, Supraśl Lavra Romanian Orthodox Church, Neamț Lavra Russian Orthodox Church, sergius Lavra Alexander Nevsky Lavra St. The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity, the Archaeology of Ancient Judea and Palestine. Sergius Lavra Photo of Holy Mountain Lavra in Ukraine Herbermann, Charles, ed. Laura

30.
Mar Saba
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The traditional date for the founding of the monastery by Sabbas the Sanctified of Mutalaska, Cappadocia is the year 483. Today, the houses around 20 monks. It is considered to be one of the oldest inhabited monasteries in the world, one in particular is the restriction on women entering the main compound. The only building that women can enter is the Womens Tower, the monastery is closed for visitors on Wednesdays and Fridays. The monastery holds the relics of Saint Sabbas, Mar Saba is occasionally referred to as the Convent or Monastery of Santa Sabba. Mar Saba was also the home of St. St. Johns tomb lies in a cave under the monastery, the Typicon took the standard form of services which were celebrated in the Patriarchate of Jerusalem and added some specifically monastic usages which were local traditions at Saint Sabbas. From there it spread to Constantinople, and thence throughout the Byzantine world, although this Typicon has undergone further evolution, particularly at the Monastery of the Stoudion in Constantinople, it is still referred to as the Typicon of Saint Sabas. The tradition states that this Monastery will host the last liturgy on earth before the return of Jesus Christ. Sabbas relics were taken by Crusaders in the 12th century and remained in Italy until Pope Paul VI returned them to the monastery in 1965 as a gesture of good will towards the Orthodox, war of Saint Sabas Media related to Mar Saba at Wikimedia Commons

31.
Hagiography
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A hagiography /ˌhæɡiˈɒɡrəfi/ is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader. The term hagiography may be used to refer to the biography of a saint or highly developed spiritual being in any of the spiritual traditions. Hagiographic works, especially those of the Middle Ages, can incorporate a record of institutional and local history, and evidence of popular cults, customs, and traditions. Hagiography constituted an important literary genre in the early Christian church, providing some informational history along with the inspirational stories. A hagiographic account of a saint can consist of a biography, a description of the saints deeds and/or miracles. The genre of lives of the saints first came into being in the Roman Empire as legends about Christian martyrs were recorded, the dates of their deaths formed the basis of martyrologies. In Western Europe hagiography was one of the important vehicles for the study of inspirational history during the Middle Ages. The Golden Legend of Jacob de Voragine compiled a great deal of medieval hagiographic material, Lives were often written to promote the cult of local or national states, and in particular to develop pilgrimages to visit relics. The bronze Gniezno Doors of Gniezno Cathedral in Poland are the only Romanesque doors in Europe to feature the life of a saint. The life of Saint Adalbert of Prague, who is buried in the cathedral, is shown in 18 scenes, the Bollandist Society continues the study, academic assembly, appraisal and publication of materials relating to the lives of Christian saints. Many of the important hagiographical texts composed in medieval England were written in the vernacular dialect Anglo-Norman, with the introduction of Latin literature into England in the 7th and 8th centuries the genre of the life of the saint grew increasingly popular. When one contrasts it to the heroic poem, such as Beowulf. Both genres then focus on the figure, but with the distinction that the saint is of a spiritual sort. Imitation of the life of Christ was then the benchmark against which saints were measured, in Anglo-Saxon and medieval England, hagiography became a literary genre par excellence for the teaching of a largely illiterate audience. Hagiography provided priests and theologians with classical handbooks in a form that allowed them the tools necessary to present their faith through the example of the saints lives. Of all the English hagiographers no one was more prolific nor so aware of the importance of the genre as Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham and his work The Lives of the Saints comprises a set of sermons on saints days, formerly observed by the English Church. The text spans the entire year and describes the lives of many saints, there are two known instances where saints lives were adapted into vernacular plays in Britain. These are the Cornish-language works Beunans Meriasek and Beunans Ke, about the lives of Saints Meriasek and Kea, Irish hagiographers wrote primarily in Latin while some of the later saints lives were written in the hagiographers native vernacular Irish

32.
Aramaic
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Aramaic is a language or group of languages belonging to the Semitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic language family. More specifically, it is part of the Northwest Semitic group, the Aramaic alphabet was widely adopted for other languages and is ancestral to the Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic alphabets. During its approximately 3000 years of history, Aramaic has served variously as a language of administration of empires, therefore, there is not one singular, static Aramaic language, each time and place rather has had its own variation. The Aramaic languages are now considered endangered, Aram is used as a proper name of several people in the Torah including descendants of Shem, Nahor, and Jacob. Ancient Aram, bordering northern Israel and now called Syria, is considered the epicenter of Aramaic. The language is often considered to have originated within Assyria. Interestingly, the Christian New Testament, for which the constituent texts are written in Koine Greek. The Hellenized Jewish community of Alexandria instead translated Aramaic to the Syrian tongue, a related language, Mlahsô, has recently become extinct. Mandaeans living in the Khuzestan Province of Iran and scattered throughout Iraq and it is quite distinct from any other Aramaic variety. Central Neo-Aramaic consists of Turoyo and the recently extinct Mlahsô, very little remains of Western Aramaic. All these speakers of Modern Western Aramaic are fluent in Arabic, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic and Samaritan Aramaic are preserved in liturgical and literary usage. Each dialect of Aramaic has its own pronunciation, and it would not be feasible here to go into all these properties. Aramaic has a palette of 25 to 40 distinct phonemes. The open vowel is an open near-front unrounded vowel and it usually has a back counterpart, and a front counterpart. There is much correspondence between these vowels between dialects, there is some evidence that Middle Babylonian dialects did not distinguish between the short a and short e. In West Syriac dialects, and possibly Middle Galilean, the long a became the o sound, the open e and back a are often indicated in writing by the use of the letters א alaph or ה he. The close front vowel is the long i and it has a slightly more open counterpart, the long e, as in the final vowel of café. Both of these have shorter counterparts, which tend to be pronounced more open

33.
Euthymius
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Saint Euthymius the Great was an abbot in Palestine venerated in both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. Euthymius was born in Melitene in Lesser Armenia, according to Christian tradition, his parents had prayed for a son at the church of Saint Polyeuctus in Melitene. Euthymius was educated by Bishop Otreius of Melitene, who ordained him. In 411, Euthymius withdrew into the wilderness with a fellow-hermit, Saint Theoctistus, when many disciples gathered around them, they turned the cavern into a church and built a monastery which was placed in the charge of St. Theoctistus. Euthymius, despite retaining his solitary lifestyle, gave direction for the others, a miraculous cure which Euthymius was believed to have effected for Terebon, the son of the Saracen chief Aspebetus, spread the fame of the holy hermit far beyond the confines of Palestine. Aspebetus was afterwards ordained priest and became bishop over his tribe, when large crowds followed him to this place also, he returned to the neighbourhood of the monastery of Theoctistus, where he took up his abode in a cavern. Every Sunday he came to the monastery to take part in the divine services. At length, because numerous disciples desired him as their guide, he founded in 420, on the right side of the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. The church connected with this laura was dedicated in 428 by Juvenal, when the Fourth Œcumenical Synod condemned the errors of Eutyches and Dioscorus, it was greatly due to the authority of Euthymius that most of the Eastern recluses accepted its decrees. The Empress Eudoxia was converted to Catholic orthodoxy through his efforts, the Church celebrates his feast on 20 January, the day of his death

34.
Masada
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Masada is an ancient fortification in the Southern District of Israel situated on top of an isolated rock plateau, akin to a mesa. It is located on the edge of the Judaean Desert. Herod the Great built palaces for himself on the mountain and fortified Masada between 37 and 31 BCE, Masada is one of Israels most popular tourist attractions. The cliff of Masada is, geologically speaking, a horst, as the cliffs on the east edge of Masada are about 400 m high, and the cliffs on the west are about 90 m high, the natural approaches to the cliff top are very difficult to navigate. The top of the plateau is flat and rhomboid-shaped, about 550 m by 270 m. Three narrow, winding paths led from below up to fortified gates, almost all historical information about Masada comes from the first-century Jewish Roman historian Josephus. Josephus writes that the site was first fortified by Alexander Jannaeus in the first century BCE, Herod the Great captured it in the power struggle that followed the death of his father Antipater. It survived the siege of the last Hasmonean king Antigonus II Mattathias, no Hasmonean-period building remains could be identified during archaeological excavations at Masada. According to Josephus, between 37 and 31 BCE, Herod the Great built a fortress on the plateau as a refuge for himself in the event of a revolt. In 66 CE, a group of Jewish rebels, the Sicarii, after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, additional members of the Sicarii fled Jerusalem and settled on the mountaintop after slaughtering the Roman garrison. According to Josephus, the Sicarii were an extremist Jewish splinter group antagonistic to a grouping of Jews referred to as the Zealots. Josephus said that the Sicarii raided nearby Jewish villages including Ein Gedi, in 73 CE, the Roman governor of Iudaea, Lucius Flavius Silva, headed the Roman legion X Fretensis and laid siege to Masada. The Roman legion surrounded Masada, built a wall and then a siege ramp against the western face of the plateau. According to Dan Gill, geological investigations in the early 1990s confirmed earlier observations that the 114 m high assault ramp consisted mostly of a spur of bedrock. The ramp was complete in the spring of 73, after two to three months of siege, allowing the Romans to finally breach the wall of the fortress with a battering ram on April 16. The Romans employed the X Legion and a number of units and Jewish prisoners of war, totaling some 15,000. A giant siege tower with a ram was constructed and moved laboriously up the completed ramp. Originally, Jewish rebels on top of Masada threw stones at those building and constructing the ramp, to counter this tactic, the Romans put captured Jewish prisoners from previously conquered towns to work at the ramp

35.
Copper Scroll
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The Copper Scroll is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in Cave 3 near Khirbet Qumran, but differs significantly from the others. Whereas the other scrolls are written on parchment or papyrus, this scroll is written on metal, unlike the others, it is not a literary work, but a list of locations at which various items of gold and silver are buried or hidden. It differs from the scrolls in its Hebrew, its orthography, palaeography. Since 2013, the Copper Scroll is on display at the newly opened Jordan Museum in Amman after being moved from its previous home, a new facsimile is in production by Facsimile Editions of London. While most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found by Bedouins, the scroll, on two rolls of copper, was found on March 14,1952 at the back of Cave 3 at Qumran. It was the last of 15 scrolls discovered in the cave and it then became clear that the rolls were part of the same document. Allegro, who had supervised the opening of the scroll, transcribed its contents immediately, the original editor Józef Milik first believed that the scroll was a product of the Essenes. However he noted that it was not an official work of the Essenes. At first Milik believed that the scroll was not an historical account. Later however, Miliks view took a turn, since there was no indication that the scroll was a product of the Essenes from the Qumran community, he changed his identification of the scroll. He now believes that the scroll was separate from the community, although it was found at Qumran in Cave 3, it was further back in the cave. As a result, he suggested the Copper Scroll was a separate deposit, although the text was assigned to Józef Milik, the Jordanian Director of Antiquities approached Allegro in 1957 to publish the text. Milik published his edition in 1962, also with hand-drawn transcriptions. The scroll was re-photographed in 1988 with greater precision, from 1994 to 1996 extensive conservation efforts by Electricité de France included evaluation of corrosion, photography, x-rays, cleaning, making a facsimile and a drawing of the letters. Emile Puechs edition had the benefit of these results, scholarly estimates of the probable date range of The Copper Scroll vary. Cross proposed the period of 25-75 CE on paleographical grounds, while W. F, kyle McCarter Jr. Albert M. Wolters, David Wilmot and Judah Lefkovits all agree that the scroll originated around 70 CE. Whereas, Emile Puech argued that the deposit of the Copper Scroll behind 40 jars could not have been placed after the jars, Józef Milik proposed that the scroll was written around 100 CE, nearly a generation after the destruction of Jerusalem. If Miliks dating of the scroll is correct, it would mean that the scroll did not come from the Qumran community because his dating puts the scroll well after the Qumran settlement was destroyed, the style of writing is unusual, different from the other scrolls

36.
Antiquities of the Jews
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Antiquities of the Jews contains an account of history of the Jewish people, written in Greek for Josephus gentile patrons. In the first ten volumes, Josephus follows the events of the books of the Hebrew Bible beginning with the creation of Adam. The second ten volumes continue the history of the Jewish people beyond the biblical text and this work, along with Josephuss other major work, The Jewish War, provides valuable background material to historians wishing to understand 1st-century AD Judaism and the early Christian period. In the preface of Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus provides his motivation for composing such a large work, josephan scholar Louis Feldman highlights several of the misconceptions about the Jewish people that were being circulated in Josephus time. In particular, the Jews were thought to lack great historical figures and they were also accused of harboring hostility toward non-Jews, and were thought to be generally lacking in loyalty, respect for authority, and charity. With these harsh accusations against the Jews fluttering about the Roman empire, Josephus, formerly Joseph ben Matthias, such a work is often called an apologia, as it pleads the case of a group of people or set of beliefs to a larger audience. In order to accomplish this goal, Josephus omitted certain accounts in the Jewish narrative, for example, the Song of the Sea sung by Moses and the people of Israel after their deliverance at the Red Sea is completely omitted in Josephus text. He does mention, however, that Moses composed a song to God in hexameter—a rather unusual scheme for an ancient Hebrew. Josephus also writes that Abraham taught science to the Egyptians, who in turn taught the Greeks, and that Moses set up a senatorial priestly aristocracy, which like Rome resisted monarchy. Thus, in an attempt to make the Jewish history more palatable to his Greco-Roman audience, in another example, apparently due to his concern with pagan antisemitism, Josephus omitted the entire episode of the golden calf from his account of the Israelites at Mount Sinai. Josephus Judean Antiquities is a source for the history of the Intertestamental period. Josephus also adds an account of his personal life, Vita. The extant copies of work, which all derive from Christian sources. The long one has come to be known as the Testimonium Flavianum, if genuine, it is an early extrabiblical record of Jesus, and as such is sometimes cited as independent evidence for the historical existence of Jesus. The earliest complete Greek manuscript of the Antiquities dates from the eleventh century, one of the best known translations of this work was provided by William Whiston in 1737, which has been in print continuously since then. However, the Loeb Classical Library has a recent translation by Henry St. John Thackeray and Ralph Marcus. A cross-reference apparatus for the Works of Josephus and the Biblical canon also exists

37.
The Jewish War
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The Jewish War or Judean War, also referred to in English as The Wars of the Jews, is a book written by Josephus, a Roman-Jewish historian of the 1st century. The next five books detail the unfolding of the war, under Roman generals Vespasian and Titus, the book was written about 75 AD, originally in Josephuss paternal tongue - either Aramaic or Hebrew- though this version has not survived. It was later translated into Greek, probably under the supervision of Josephus himself, however, the current Greek edition does not appear to be a translation, but must be considered a new edition, a complete re-working of the first writing and likely a considerable expansion. The text also survives in an Old Slavonic version, as well as Hebrew which contains material not found in the Greek version, H. Leeming and K. Leeming, Josephus Jewish War and Its Slavonic Version, A Synoptic Comparison. Ancient Judaism & Early Christianity, Brill, notes on the Old Slavonic Josephus Hear a discussion and analysis of this monograph, on an episode of the radio series Invitation to Learning. Loeb Classical Library Josephus Volume 2 The Jewish War Books 1-3 Loeb Classical Library Josephus Volume 3 The Jewish War Books 4-7

38.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker

39.
Haaretz
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It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently still in print in Israel, and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International New York Times, both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet. In North America, it out as a weekly newspaper. It is known for its left-wing and liberal stances on domestic, as of 2016, the newspaper had a weekday exposure rate of 3. 9% in Israel, significantly lower than the countrys other national newspapers. Haaretz was first published in 1918 as a newspaper sponsored by the British military government in Palestine, in 1919, it was taken over by a group of socialist-oriented Zionists, mainly from Russia. The newspaper was established on 18 June 1919 by a group of businessmen including prominent philanthropist Isaac Leib Goldberg, later, the name was shortened to Haaretz. The literary section of the paper attracted leading Hebrew writers of the time, the newspaper was initially published in Jerusalem. From 1919 to 1922, the paper was headed by a succession of editors and it was shut down briefly due to a budgetary shortfall and reopened in Tel Aviv at the beginning of 1923 under the editorship of Moshe Glickson, who held the post for 15 years. The Tel Aviv municipality granted the financial support by paying in advance for future advertisements. Salman Schocken, a wealthy German Jewish Zionist who owned a chain of department stores in Germany and his son, Gershom Schocken, became the chief editor in 1939 and held that position until his death in 1990. Until August 2006, the Schocken family owned 100% of the Haaretz Group, the deal was negotiated with the help of former Israeli ambassador to Germany, Avi Primor. This deal was seen as controversial in Israel as DuMont Schaubergs father, Kurt Neven DuMont, was member of the German Nazi party, while his publishing house promoted Nazi ideology. On 12 June 2011, it was announced that Russian-Israeli businessman Leonid Nevzlin had purchased a 20% stake in the Haaretz Group, buying 15% from the family and this means that the Schocken family now owns 60% and M. DuMont Schauberg and Leonid Nevzlin have 20% each. In October 2012, a union strike mobilized to protest planned layoffs by the Haaretz management, as a consequence, both the Haaretz newspaper and its TheMarker business supplement were not printed for one day. According to Israel Radio, it was the first time since 1965 that a newspaper did not go to press on account of a strike, the newspapers editorial policy was defined by Gershom Schocken, who was editor-in-chief from 1939 to 1990. Schocken was succeeded as editor-in-chief by Hanoch Marmari, in 2004 David Landau replaced Marmari and was succeeded by Dov Alfon in 2008. The current editor-in-chief of the newspaper is Aluf Benn, who replaced Alfon in August 2011, charlotte Halle became editor of the English Print Edition in February 2008. Haaretz describes itself as having a liberal outlook both on domestic issues and on international affairs

The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period were the period of European history generally comprising the 14th and 15th …

From the Apocalypse in a Biblia Pauperum illuminated at Erfurt around the time of the Great Famine. Death sits astride a lion whose long tail ends in a ball of flame (Hell). Famine points to her hungry mouth.

JUDAEA, Hasmoneans. John Hyrcanus I (Yehohanan). 135-104 BCE. Æ Prutah (13mm, 2.02 gm, 12h). "Yehohanan the High Priest and the Council of the Jews" (in Hebrew) in five lines within wreath / Double cornucopiae adorned with ribbons; pomegranate between horns; small A to lower left. Meshorer Group B, 11; Hendin 457.